


Well Played

by Thinlyletteredabyss



Category: Original Work
Genre: 19th Century, 19th Century France, Crimes & Criminals, Dubious Consent, Humiliation, Law Enforcement, M/M, Manipulation, Mentions of Sexual Harassment, Revenge, Subspace, Verbal Humiliation, an homage to Balzac kinda sorta, closet key, denied intimacy, dubcon humiliation kink, enforced subspace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28632939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thinlyletteredabyss/pseuds/Thinlyletteredabyss
Summary: A police agent highly regarded for his composure has a task of infiltrating a criminal plot. Unfortunately, his only link is dead set on driving him up the wall.
Kudos: 2





	Well Played

The famed police agent Jean-Marie Paré had never taken his victories for granted even when they fell right into his lap, and this mindset has proven itself valuable many times, but especially now, when Paré was tasked with confronting and, hopefully, eliciting a helpful gesture of some sort from someone known only as ‘Scholar’s Mate’, the right-hand man of a criminal mastermind of such notoriety that no one even dared to give him a playful nickname, like the aforementioned Scholar’s Mate, an opening which can be allowed to happen only by children and chess novices, or ‘Kitty Carriage’, an epithet for a woman serving as another link in their criminal chain, given both in reference to the Nordic goddess Freya, whom the woman resembled a great amount, and to her reportedly playful appearance. In contrast to his acquaintances, the mastermind himself was a dark and looming presence in the department’s halls, something too great to be named, since to name something – or someone – was to gain control of it.

Paré steeled himself, slipping out of the post chaise, which concealed true intentions of his visit, and into an unassuming house where Scholar’s Mate was said to be awaiting him. Climbing endless flights of stairs and trying to calm and steady his breath with every step, Paré entertained himself with thoughts of how Scholar’s Mate himself would look like. Is he a convict with faded features and bloodied knuckles, whose mouth is much more used to insults and injuries than to polite conversations? Or, perhaps, he’s as ugly and fearsome as the mental presence of his master: jaw unhinged, hair unkempt, eyes rabid and colorless? Hell, maybe Scholar’s Mate is a woman, there was no way of knowing – yet.

Reaching the sought-for room, Paré put his hand on the handle and pulled. Nothing. The door was locked, making Paré sigh. But of course, there had to be a ritual showing how insignificant the police agent was to Scholar’s Mate grand persona. Trying to not show his annoyance, Paré knocked, and, after a minute or so of waiting, metaphorical Sesame finally opened.

Paré blinked with confusion at the sight of his soon-to-be interlocutor. For a second, his famed composure betrayed him, and two quivering words “Are you-“ slipped from his tongue in an instant.

“Indeed I am,” the man replied; he spoke like a person who thoroughly enjoyed his own voice, manners and oh so many times rehearsed inflections. “Would you like to proceed into the room, or is a doorstep a fine enough seating for you?”

Taking his time to draw a deep breath, Paré silently nodded and entered the room, trying not to eye up and down the person who was, without a doubt, Scholar’s Mate.

The man was shorter than average, perhaps even shorter than most women; the top of his head would surely line up with Paré’s collarbones, and the agent himself wasn’t even close to a stature most would call towering. His fine hair showed signs of darkening with age, but he was still young enough to retain the fair color of wheat fields. His face had several small scars, most probably signs of a disease long past, but even they couldn’t cover his natural beauty: Paré could bet Scholar’s Mate was a darling with women, since a lot of them, especially capricious Parisians, prefer men like him – poets whose thin faces and small hands looked more feminine than masculine; oh, vanity, a sin that unites so many starkly different women as one – they love themselves so much they would rather marry their reflection than find an actual meritorious provider.

His clothing wasn’t without a claim to luxury: he wore dimmed purple, which made the silver of his eyes look even colder than it would without this trim. His small rings were home to several fine jewels, which were, as far as Paré could tell, real and genuine. The only thing that was out of place in the image of a goody-two-shoes that Scholar’s Mate so carefully projected were his nails: bitten so short that the tender skin under them began to show, they completely lost their pale pink color, filling with small cracks, white spots and bloody markings. The skin around the nails looked horrifying, too: glistening with little meaty cavities, it was obvious that not only the man had bitten it, but also put other tools to use, maybe a pocket knife or a sewing needle.

“Are you done, officer?” Scholar’s Mate exclaimed almost impatiently. “Before eating me alive with your gaze like you would do with a harlot you claimed for your night off, maybe you would ask my name, for starters?”

“Then what is it, then?” Paré asked, himself hardly having any patience for the man’s antics.

Scholar’s Mate went silent for a moment, then cracked a grin and said, “Well, since you and your mates…” He paused, and Paré had to physically constrain himself from groaning. The man continued, “…are known so for providing notorious people with less than stellar epithets, I suppose I shall take matters into my own hands. ‘Durak’ will suffice.”

Paré blinked. “And that means?..”

“A fool,” the man explained, “in Russian. However, this word is meant only to insult a person’s intelligence. The word ‘fool’ can also mean ‘a jester, someone to entertain using crude humor’, but scrupulous Russians had to have a word for every concept, so that’s how we end up with a word that only means disrespect and does not allow room for the insulted to think he has anything in common with the clowns of the king’s court.”

Paré could already feel his spirit leaving his mortal coil, but Scholar’s Mate wasn’t done yet. “However, I understand that this particular insult can be hard to pronounce for my fellow Frenchmen, and your department wouldn’t be able to keep up with the harsh poetry that is the vast plain of Russian swear words. Worry not! I have another one for you: you can call me a lard pig or a pus abscess, to your liking.”

Paré took in his adversary’s thin, almost gaunt form, his near perfect, save for hardly noticeable scars, skin, and said nothing. Scholar’s Mate, or however he wanted to call himself, seemed satisfied with his little bit and finally gave in. “Well officer, you can call me Gauthier, if you’re not impressed with my,” he simply could not withhold a simper, “foolery. And what can I call you?”

“Jean-Marie Paré, a police agent,” Paré humbly described himself. Before he could utter another word, however, Gauthier’s eyes darkened, turning from silver to raincloud gray.

“Paré, if I haven’t misheard?” he repeated, getting more agitated by the minute. Paré nodded, all the while mentally listing all his misdeeds, no matter how minor. Has he crossed paths with Gauthier and his superior in the past? This was unlikely, but, given how often the mastermind himself operates from the shadows, his face and identity obscured, Paré wasn’t ready to discard it completely.

Gauthier started pacing to and fro, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression almost furious. “Take a seat, would you?” he said, almost seething with whatever unpleasant emotion he felt towards Paré. The latter obediently positioned himself on the brink of a narrow bed, unable to take his eyes off Gauthier, who at this point was almost running across the room, the noise of his footsteps being close to unbearably loud.

“What, in Lord’s name, is on your mind?” Paré finally exclaimed, feeling how Gauthier’s frantic movements were starting to feed the hellfire that were his recurrent migraines. Gauthier smirked – not like a jester, more like a cold-hearted murderer he unmistakably was.

“Who are you to mention His name in vain? I will tell you what’s on my mind. Remember that one time your undershirt needed to be quickly fixed by a seamstress?”

Paré exhaled loudly, keeping in a curse he would so gladly release upon Gauthier. “How many times was that?” he retorted; not used to feeling trapped, Paré was losing his composure swiftly. Already furious Gauthier had nothing to lose, so he continued his verbal assault without giving any sort of respite.

“Well, that one time you surely remember. The seamstress, her name and features already out of your mind, made a mistake – and even though you couldn’t possibly care who she was, I will tell you. Her name was Monique Marier, and she was the only breadwinner in her family.”

“What has that got to do with anything?” Paré asked, still unsure whether to be scared or annoyed. It was hard to have Gauthier put about, so he continued forth.

“If you are going to have anything to do with me, this is a matter of life and death. So, I repeat, little Monique, hardly seventeen at the time, made a mistake. You don’t even remember what it was – something to do with the kind of the stitch she used, I wonder? Maybe she used the wrong hanger to keep it even until your return, and it got all stretched up? You don’t remember, and I don’t know. But you were angry nonetheless. Not only you scolded her for the perceived wrongdoing, which seemed obvious for the man of your standing and character. You drove her to tears, but that didn’t stop you. You did worse.”

“What’s with that display?” Paré hissed, feeling cornered. “Have you heard a rumor in the streets and wanted to act as a hand of God? There are more urgent matters at hand.”

“I wasn’t finished.” The mask of a jester was gone completely; now, seeing an absolutely unhinged man before himself, Paré understood why his colleagues were so afraid of Scholar’s Mate. “Thinking that one kind of humiliation was not enough to teach her a lesson, you went further. You groped her breasts through the thin fabric of her cheaply-made dress- Get your act together, rascal, this is not over yet. So you groped her, and you said, I believe, verbatim, ‘Of course you seem to not harbor any passion towards sewing. Who would need to work as a laborious seamstress when she is that well-endowed?’”

Silence fell like a stone. Paré felt as if his face was being poked by a hot rod, while Gauthier, his wrathful image gone in a blink, sat across the room in a chair, crossing his legs and his arms, too.

“After this little walk down the memory lane,” Gauthier said, drawing out his words as if to prolong the execution Paré felt had befallen him, “should we get down to the aforementioned urgent matters at hand?”

Paré was speechless. Gauthier shot him a gaze, his eyes silver again, and picked an apple from a fruit bowl that was positioned on a scantily set table. “Oh yes,” he continued, half-heartedly biting into the fruit just to throw it back in the bowl on the second bite, “she quit sewing after that. It figures.”

After Gauthier went through the whole bowl, sinking his teeth into each and every one of the fruits, Paré had finally had it in himself to speak.

“Now that this sermon is over,” he uttered, still in shock over what he heard mere moments ago, “I can relay to you the plan our department has for apprehending a criminal known only as Gaulin. Perhaps you happen to be acquainted with him?”

“Gaulin, you say?” Gauthier seemed much more interested in the coat of his own saliva that covered tender flesh of a pear before him than in whatever Paré had to say to him. “Yes, a lot of my higher-ups have heard of him, and some could even call themselves his friends. Or, actually, pen pals.” He yawned, “Does he still not show his face in public? A recluse, as he’s always been?”

“Of course,” Paré said, keeping his exasperation at Gauthier’s twaddle at bay. It was much easier now that Paré had seemed to have the upper hand in the exchange. “Otherwise, it would take us no time to catch him.”

“The ubiquitous and, surprisingly, nevertheless so mysterious ‘us’,” Gauthier responded flatly, still studying the surface of the long-suffering pear. “Tell me, agent, what nickname have you bestowed upon poor Gaulin? What kind of mockery was he subjected to?”

Paré felt a surge of hot redness rising up his neck and lower parts of his face. His colleagues can be so embarrassing sometimes. “It’s ‘Pirate’,” he said under his breath, prompting Gauthier to crack a larky smile.

“This is brilliant, my dear monsieur, simply brilliant.” He let go of the fruit to thrust his hands into the air. “The Pirate of the Seven Drug Seas! What a move! What a title, so simple yet so succinct! Please tell the genius that came up with it to send me a check for the publishing of his next lurid paperback, I would cover all costs.”

Paré grinned, trying to match up Gauthier’s perceived jovial buffoonery. Thankfully, the man dropped the act as quickly as he started it and asked with utmost seriousness, “And what’s the plan, monsieur?”

“Before I tell you that, I would have to ask whether you know another key person this plan is contingent upon,” Paré tried to do a dramatic pause, quickly realized it doesn’t suit his quasi-professional speech whatsoever, and resumed, “a vendor known as Anaïs.”

A sour grimace crossed Gauthier’s face. “That wench we do know of. A scammer of heretofore unknown amount of insolence. A spanner in the works and a pain in the arse. A familiar sight indeed.”

Paré raised his brows, not expecting that kind of reaction. “Had she been tormenting you for a while?”

Gauthier spat a couple of pear seeds in his palm and began arranging them on the tabletop in a mockery of a regiment or a platoon. “Yes, and under different names at that. Two years ago she was Lucille; we have recognized her by the smallest quirks of speech imaginable, otherwise she leaves no trace behind after disappearing into thin air.”

“It would’ve been an honor to conduct such an investigation at your side, have we known that you could be an ally, not only a foe,” Paré suggested calmly, not particularly expecting an enthusiastic response. Gauthier was swift to prove him right.

“No thank you,” he answered; Paré tensed up, waiting for another display of clownery, but Gauthier’s manner remained uncharacteristically dry. “I am not inclined to think my superiors would approve any sort of coalition with the law that is closer than this one.”

“And why had they allowed this, may I ask?” Paré inquired, faking boredom; this subject was indeed of utmost curiosity to him. Gauthier shrugged, once again suddenly having a vested interest in his army of pear seeds and hardly heeding any of Paré’s words.

“My guess? Ennui. We long needed something to shake us up, a wild chase, a witch hunt. Market has been quiet for a very long while; if it hadn’t been so, we wouldn’t have been inclined to show our faces in such bold ways.”

“Your faces?” A note of surprise struck Paré again. “But you’re the only one we had a chance to converse with.”

Gauthier took another pear – no doubt to grow his great army. “For now, that is. Wait a moment, and the dark one would offer you other chances simply to avoid the lethargy.”

Fully engrossed in the military conquests of shiny brown seeds, Gauthier couldn’t notice a quick grin flashing across Paré’s face. ‘The dark one’, is it? This is the epithet you have granted to your fearsome senior? This is it?

“You can call him ‘the adversary’, if you’d like it so,” Gauthier remarked, once again proving much more observant than Paré expected him to be. “He likes simple names. Makes him feel more like a concept and less like a person.”

“And what use does that have, I wonder,” Paré said blandly, putting all of his acting talent to convincingly pull off an uncaring display. It seemed to be in vain, though, since throughout all of the talking Gautier was yet to raise his eyes up from his puerile distraction.

“I’d wager it sounds more threatening,” he mused, decorating one of the seeds with fragments of paint he picked from the old and faded tabletop. “No, but think about it – what radical difference does it make, to call a person by his name or by a collection of adjectives and nouns, carefully picked, but yet of such variety that it would make the greatest minds of the police department of Paris crash and burn. Who is Gautier?” He smiled almost childishly, caressing the seed general with his thumb. “A fool, a jester, a clown, simply a prick. And who is Scholar’s Mate?” The general has gained a cap made from the skin of an apple and was brandishing a weapon constructed from a wood chip and some wayward sawdust. “A genius of planning and communication, something of a threatening presence, a grand vizier to a barbarous Shah.”

He pulled away from the tabletop, clapping his hands to get rid of sawdust and fruit juice. “Alright, I got bored. So why would you need Anaïs, monsieur? Do you really hate yourself that much?”

Paré drew another deep breath – more cautiously this time, since who knows how much sawdust was still floating in the air – and began painstakingly relaying the plan to Gauthier, silently praying that he won’t need to explain it another dozen times.

Gaulin’s very presence was a mystery to the law enforcement; the young man – presumably, since his daring moves would only fit someone who was in his twenties or early thirties and not an experienced criminal with a ton of baggage behind his back – lived, as Gauthier already mentioned, as a recluse, staying in a giant boarding house with about two to three dozen of other men and a handful of women, mostly mistresses or harlots. This bachelor’s heaven was located on the outskirts of town and held so much lodgers and their possessions that it was impossible to conduct a search and find something, anything, since Gaulin would have already escaped by the time they stepped into his room. They tried, oh word, did they try; there was much female screaming, much heavy swearing and zero evidence of Gaulin’s existence. Lord knows, maybe he already moved flats or even houses, there was no way to be sure of that.

Gaulin was a mythical specter on the black market, more a folktale timidly retold by word of mouth than a figure of flesh and blood. He traded everything, from drugs to weapons to even stocks, but failed to gain much respect due to his youth and recklessness; however, what he got was much more valuable – with the funds acquired by thinking quickly on his feet, which reminded the agents of a thief’s or a gambler’s mindset, he became a very influential dealer, having set up a small and nifty web of operations, mostly made up from young boys who did dirty work for him without even seeing the man’s face for once. Gaulin’s signature on anyone’s check meant the world for any of the local usurers, since he was known to be extremely generous with money, sometimes spending absurd amounts on people he could discard any day.

This was the crux of their plan: drain so much money out of Gaulin that he would have no choice but to lose all reverence his army of loan sharks had for him and to show his face once, just once, to try and make amends with one of them, namely Bonnet, who was known for having a change of heart once hearing tearful pleadings of debtors.

“Now that’s ambitious,” Gauthier remarked, picking at his nails, the sight of which made Paré wince every other second. “But Gaulin swims in money, he can buy half of Paris and still have enough to inscribe his name on every wall of every house with golden letters. What even can make him spend all of it and then get into debt? Have you had a deal with resurrected Delilah, monsieur?”

“That’s where Anaïs comes into play,” Paré simply explained, causing Gauthier’s eyes to gleam with something resembling excitement.

“Oh yes, that hussy has a knack for burning through checks like firewood. Go on, you have my full attention.”

Paré hated the way his cheeks flushed at a compliment his interlocutor dropped so carelessly, and he continued on, trying to crush this very unwelcome feeling of being appreciated, which stopped frequenting him long ago, just after he decided to pursue a career in the police department.

The plan was thus: Anaïs, a known scammer – or rather, someone impersonating her – would haunt Gaulin with letters explaining that her last con was actually performed by somebody else, who took all the product and left her behind to take the fall. Of course, Gaulin is not naïve enough to accept this version of events, so another contender shows up to put him under more pressure: a wayward chemist named, let’s say, Jean-Luc Lamontagne, would write to Gaulin swearing he is Anaïs’s current partner in crime and that she scammed him too, and out of five hundred francs at that. Claiming to know the identities of a bunch of frequent buyers of hers, Jean-Luc would blackmail Gaulin for exactly that sum under the threat of going over with a list of names to the police. Gaulin, seeing red at this point, would want to eliminate both targets, one – to make sure she never messes with the market again, and the other – to know that the blackmailing scheme would never come to fruition. Anaïs, hoping to prove her loyalty, connects Gaulin to her ‘provider’ named Arnaud Bourget, who would, of course, be an undercover agent. Bourget, seeming to have even less patience than Gaulin, offers him a deal: seven hundred thousand francs, and both pests are guaranteed to be gone. The department had estimated this amount of money would milk Gaulin dry, but he simply would not be able to resist such a quick resolution to a ton of problems.

What they needed from Gauthier and his master was a way in – someone to give the letters to Gaulin, someone who knows the secret code which would let only Gaulin and none other take the letters from the mailbox which was a collective one for all of the lodgers in the boarding house. They just needed a crack in the wall, nothing less, nothing more.

Gauthier wasn’t impressed.

“Alright,” he said after a moment of pondering, “I can assess the risk, but only if you promise to repeat my conclusion word for word, just to make sure we’re on the same page, agreed?”

Paré nodded, not yet grasping Gauthier’s intentions. The man continued, “I simply want you to know that… Brace yourself for that one, monsieur. The deal is…” He paused once again, grinning like the most shameless buffoon he was. “…our men know who Gaulin is. They bought first hand from him, drank wine with him, some of them even watched his little sister being baptized. The most unfortunate ones are so familiar with the guy his face could be engraved on their eyelids and it wouldn’t make a difference. He isn’t an enigma, he’s a person with needs and wants, just like all of us. Don’t act like when police can’t see face to face with someone, this person is suddenly a ghost moving in clandestine ways, sliding through space and time like needle through fabric.”

Paré felt his blood boil, but, once again, the execution wasn’t over yet: Gauthier had to come to the aforementioned conclusion. “So, monsieur,” he jovially teased, brushing the long-forgotten pear seed army from the tabletop, aiming from the spot that was just right for the seeds to fall in Paré’s lap, “here’s what it comes down to: this plan is so over-complicated it’s moronic, and the people who came up with it are the living proof that fish rots down from the head.”

Paré was dumbfounded; the shame of his predicament crashed at him like a wave, and Gauthier just couldn’t stop staring, this son of a-

Pursing his lips not to let the insult out, the agent then parted them just enough to mutter under his breath, “This plan is so-“

“Tell the truth and shame the devil,” Gauthier continued teasing, bobbing his head to the side. “I want to hear it clearly, to make sure there wasn’t any miscommunication between us. Well?”

Paré’s face burned hot red. “This plan is so- _why is he smirking like this?_ over-complicated it’s moronic- _and the lip-licking?_ and the persons who came up with it- _is he aroused?_ are the living proof that fish rots down from the head. _if I hadn’t known men as good as I do, I would have never thought-_ “

“You got a word wrong,” his tormentor smiled, leaning closer, “please pay more attention this time so we could get it over with, monsieur.”

“Now that is simply ridiculous.” Paré stood up, causing the pear seeds to fall towards the wooden floor and settle between the floorboards. “I was here to have a civil discussion, not to play a children’s game.”

Gauthier was still smiling, notably keeping his hands on his slender thighs. “You want something from me, agent, and I’m not giving it up without a fight. You have to make a decision, though: do you want it this badly to the extent of completely debasing yourself?”

“I, for one, do not want anything,” Paré retorted, “I have a task, which is the only reason I’m still here, considering what a fool you are consistently making of yourself.”

Gauthier’s smile grew wider, almost to the point of making his thin face look grotesque and inhuman. “A task, of course.” His gray eyes once again got cold and gained a steel-like shine, which reminded Paré to not let down his guard. “What a convenient little-“ He crushed a bug with a nauseating wet sound and resumed talking while wiping off the poor creature’s thick mucus not with a handkerchief, but using the fabric of his own pants, which almost made Paré gag a second time. “-lie. You are inclined to call me a fool, which, fair, I allowed you myself. But please, by all means, do evaluate your choices. I am a self-proclaimed jester, and yet I would never sink that low to justify my actions with such foul words. When I first got blood on my hands, I didn’t say the dark one made me do it – I did it myself, by my own volition, since every step of the way I could’ve said ‘no’, and yet I didn’t.

“And now, you. A high-standing official, a self-made man, and a righteous one at that, to be sure, not a tinge of corruption in those world-weary eyes. You are compliant thanks to the force of habit, obviously, after so many years spent in the service for your city and country. You are so used to following orders that you won’t even question a clown who is clearly dead set on humiliating you. And you keep telling yourself it’s for the department, since everything they tell you to do is in the name of justice, of course. But look me in the eye, Paré. You want this. I will be honest with you, since you seem the type to never be honest with yourself, especially in such titillating circumstances: you love this. What a pleasure, to be knocked down a peg, to be shown your place, by a handsome man at that. Do you think I would’ve pulled such a show for a mindless brute of a captain, or a silly lieutenant so young he can’t even grow facial hair yet?” He laughed, shaking his head at stunned Paré. “No. I would’ve dropped the act the very second I saw that my spectacle isn’t selling; but you are absolutely buying it.”

“It would be a sight to see you on the gallows,” Paré spat out, still tensed up and petrified. Gauthier was quick with his retort, “I would ridicule you aloud so masterfully that not only the executioner and the crowd would be in tears from laughing, you would run up the scaffold and tear the noose from my neck just to keep hearing it.”

Paré was left speechless, his mouth agape, and yet Gauthier seemed as unconcerned as ever. “Now… Well.” He cracked his knuckles, which would cause Paré to make a wry face on a good day, but now it was absolutely driving him over the edge. “When I betrayed the whole game to you, there is no way in hell you would still dance to my tune after this. I have to devise a new test of loyalty to prove to the dark one you won’t pull stupid shit on us both.”

Paré shuddered. It was admirable how many words it had taken for Gauthier to finally swear openly like this, and it really felt threatening at this point.

“What can you do for me, Paré?” he asked, turning towards the agent, his pale fingers and bloodied nails resting on his thighs. He was no longer a man-child entertaining himself with seeds and woodchips, but a deadly foe.

“Whatever it takes,” Paré replied, trying to be still. Gauthier smirked and stood up from the table, his small stature being at odds with the confidence and cold anger he displayed.

“So you have nothing to bargain with. Good to know.”

“You would ask for much more than I could offer, anyway,” Paré responded rather weakly, still grappling with the fact he already lost the game he never knew the rules of from the start. Seeing his opponent frown, Gauthier looked even more glowing than before, the triumph bringing out all of his dark beauty that Paré had no chance of noticing prior to that very moment.

“That’s about right.” He came several steps closer, too close for comfort, and his fingers brushed against Paré’s graying hair. “Now-“

Gauthier suddenly made a serious face, that imp, and Paré’s heart skipped a beat. He had no idea of Gauthier’s history, of his past, how he became acquainted with the adversary – hell, he didn’t even know what his last name was, – but something so unbearably sentimental inside him hoped that, maybe, another time, another place-

“-on your knees,” Gauthier ordered, dashing Paré’s hopes in an instant.

After a brief moment of hesitation, Paré complied, the feeling of hard wooden boards against his knees slightly distracting him from the shame of his position. Gauthier continued to stroke his hair, moving his fingers back and forth in an almost soothing manner, like absent-mindedly caressing a close friend or a loved one. Gauthier’s breath was calm, the hissing of his exhales lingering in the air, allowing Paré to calm himself too just by listening to the languid sounds.

“That is exactly what I was talking about,” Gauthier suddenly whispered, his voice much lower now, almost echoing in Paré’s exhausted mind. “How secure, how nice you feel being like this – in someone else’s grasp, knowing you can be valued, knowing that maybe, just maybe, in this moment you are valued by someone. Now, am I right?”

He scratched Paré’s scalp – well, as much as he could manage with his stubs for nails, – urging him to answer. Paré has to swallow before talking, since his mouth felt strangely dry. “Yes, you are,” he sheepishly agreed, not at all resisting when Gauthier brought his head closer to his thigh, Paré’s temple nearly pressing into his crotch.

“I think there is a word on the tip of your tongue,” Gauthier continued, whispering so quietly Paré had to hold his breath to hear. “A word you are quite ashamed of, but which would sound so sweet, especially to my ears. I understand the shame, since you concealed this part of yourself for so long. But it’s too late to go back now. So what’s the word?”

Paré understood all too well what Gauthier meant, and this understanding alone made the entirety of his skin ache and burn, his innards twisting into a spiral of tantalizing anxiety.

“Master,” he uttered, so wholly defeated. Gauthier brushed against his cheek in one sweeping motion, almost like petting a guard dog.

“Correct.”

The point of the whole exchange was completely eluding Paré, rendering him stupefied. Was it… erotic, in a sense? He wasn’t sure, since he definitely wasn’t getting hard, and neither was Gauthier, as far as he could tell. Then why? A power trip of a deranged crook? But why did it have to be so personal, intimate, even? How could this devil of a man see right through Paré, calling out the most queer of his desires, and then immediately indulging them? Whatever ends Gauthier was hoping to achieve, this method seemed the most out of place for it.

“Would be a sight to see you on all fours,” Gauthier kept on with drawing out his sentences, and each of them, at least to Paré , felt as long as the one that is served in prison. “Just like the hound you deem yourself to be. To leave you with nothing but the most primitive of instincts to chase, hunt, kill.” He scraped against Paré’s chin, slightly tugging at the skin and feeling his jaw. “You, and I’m talking all of you, think of criminals as this wild folk who act without rhyme or reason, hypnotized by their wishes and vices, looking for scraps and, simultaneously, for glory.

“But you are no different. In fact, you’re so much worse. Seeing the way your whole body is turning soft and numb,” he lightly tapped his fingers on the base of Paré’s skull, causing the man to emit a slight groan which has turned to a whine embarrassingly quickly, “I already know you have completely crushed your plans of giving chase. What of the department? What of the justice and doing what’s right? Shut that right off, police agent Paré is being tended to for the first time in his life.”

Paré hated how correct Gauthier was, and hated himself even more for going along with it, not finding the strength or even a hint of desire to get up and throw the man’s hands off of him. This self-loathing had reached it’s peak when Gauthier distractedly murmured, “Good boy,” causing Paré to feel the familiar gentle burn of a growing erection.

“I hate you,” he forced out, then immediately contradicted himself by burying his flushed face in the hand Gauthier so accommodatingly put forward.

“Indeed you do,” the man said with a smile. Suffocated by the absurdity and the shame of it all, Paré picked a woodchip from the floor, pushing it in the palm of his other hand. It drew blood, and the sharp pain that shot through his nerves right up to the elbow and then to the brain allowed him to think more clearly, even for a brief moment.

Paré was about to ask _Now what are you-_ , but before he even could part his lips, a gentle “There, there” from Gauthier had shattered all of the clarity that was left. Paré felt himself as hapless as only a child or a wounded animal could be, and Gauthier’s gentle pats on the head weren’t helping. “Does my presence hurt so much you would rather get a splinter into your bloodstream and die?” Gauthier purred, wiping Paré’s blood on the fabric of his long-suffering pants. “Come now, that is hardly good sense.”

Saying that, Gauthier pulled Paré’s hand up, and, before Paré could even comprehend what was asked of him, Gauthier leaned slightly (the fact that Gauthier was so short he didn’t even need to fully bend down wasn’t lost on Paré, and he, in an unusual burst of sentimentality, found that adorable) and planted a kiss on Paré’s palm.

Or licked the blood off. It didn’t matter.

Heaven knows, all of this stopped making sense long ago.

Paré felt dizzy. All of this was too much, and simultaneously too little. He felt as if Gauthier made him enter a state that was so unusual ( _Maybe it was drugs?_ his mind raced. _Oh lord, it must’ve been drugs_ ) that he didn’t even question anything he did or said. Even his self-loathing disappeared, letting Paré enjoy the moment, as inflaming, shameful and deceitful as it was.

He almost forgot he was dealing with an enemy, and there already were one too many almost’s to let this one slip through.

“What do you even need from me?” Paré managed to hiss out, his vision blurred, with nausea chipping away at the roof of his mouth. Gauthier chuckled.

“You already know.”

Paré closed his eyes, and all he could discern was a sound of a belt being unbuckled. Well, now that was obvious. Let’s get it over with, he thought, leaning closer and slightly opening his mouth, but an unexpected scolding startled him.

“Up! Up, up, up, you ghoul.”

It took time for Paré to understand that it was Gauthier talking, not another agent that walked in on them both. Gauthier took several steps back, and Paré, no longer feeling the support, fell forward. That wonderful – terrible – state evaporated in an instant, leaving Paré to cough and dry heave his way through mortifying disgust he felt with himself.

Gauthier offered no respite; with a sharp “Whoever I am, I’m not an adulterer” he adjusted his clothes, calmly and orderly, as if nothing happened – or if it did happen, and he was trying to hide something. One question burned in Paré’s mind through all the confusion and disgrace, and it was, honestly, the simplest one he could’ve asked at the moment.

“You’re married?”

“Yes.” Gauthier went over to the mirror and started fiddling with his hair, the same jokester Paré had encountered a mere hour ago. “Her name’s Monique.”

_Good God._

“Nee Marier,” he delivered the fatal blow.

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks for reading this all the way to the end. It means the world to me


End file.
